


In The Rough

by HCN



Series: Sociopathic Indifference [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, James Bond/Vesper Lynd - Freeform, Other, Vesper Lynd is Alive, Vesper Lynd/Yusef, Vesper Lynd/other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 07:03:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10588887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HCN/pseuds/HCN
Summary: Vesper lives, and lives on the run, and thinks that just once it would be nice to save someone without ruining her entire life.





	

A young woman walks down the street. Her long black hair is pinned up to the side and falls over her right shoulder. She wears a black evening coat to match her short, grey designer skirt, and tall boots that make her long legs look even longer. A pair of large, round sunglasses sits on her cheekbones. Two men walk a few steps behind her on either side.

It’s late autumn. The town is mostly empty. Most of its money comes from tourists visiting the island on holidays. In a few weeks it’ll be Christmas time and Vesper has been told the streets will fill up with holidaymakers looking for some nicer weather. In the meantime the town is rather quiet.

Vesper sips her soda and watches from across the young woman as she stops in front of a boutique window. She studies it for a moment before disappearing inside. One man waits outside. The other follows her in. When Vesper was that age she didn’t dress nearly so stylish, and she was never so pretty. How old is that girl, anyway? Twenty? Twenty-five? For all Vesper knows they’re the same age, and she just looks particularly young.

It’s getting late. She doesn’t have anywhere to be, but soon the restaurant will have its evening rush and they won’t want her taking up a table. They’re very kind to her; in the day they let her sit for as long as she wants. She buys something every so often out of courtesy. The owner is a middle-aged British woman named Christine; she moved out to Greece some time ago. Sometimes the woman who owns the place opens a bottle of wine and shares it with her; when it’s slow, they talk for hours. She told Vesper once that this is two dreams folded into one: to move out to Greece, and to open a restaurant.

Vesper’s considered asking for a job, but can never bring herself to commit. And anyway, it isn’t like she has any ID that won’t immediately identify her as that missing woman from the treasury, the one who’s done all sorts of terrible things.

Vesper picks up her tab for the afternoon and shows herself out.

Instead of going back to her hotel she crosses the street and turns to the left. Reaching the boutique, the man is still standing there. Vesper pauses to look in through the window, aware that she’s being watched but of course she’s done nothing wrong and so she doesn’t allow herself to flinch under his scrutiny. She keeps looking at the dresses. How would the red one look on her? The blue one?

She can’t imagine how much they cost.

The door opens and the young woman walks out. A new bag hangs over her shoulder, and she carries a bag in each hand. She turns to the man waiting at the door and says something to the man in Cantonese. For a flickering moment Vesper wishes she studied that instead of Mandarin. She watches in the reflection as they walk away, pressing herself closer to the glass so they don’t touch her.

The young woman doesn’t look twice at her, nor do either of the men she is with.

When they’re a few shop lengths down Vesper backs away from the window and makes her way back to the hotel.

*

She thinks of the dark-haired girl while the hotel owner’s son fucks her that night, imagining how her naked body looks and what it would feel like to be under her. Vesper closes her eyes and imagines it’s the girls taloned hand pulling her hair and her mouth biting the pale skin on Vesper’s neck.

The knee between her thighs is too rough to belong to the girl (she thinks of her legs and those boots and moans) and the hand moving from her hip to between her legs is too broad to be any woman’s. When his fingers push inside her she grits her jaw and makes a fist in his shirt. She doesn’t want to be naked under him while he’s dressed, or to have his hand in her hair and his mouth panting against her skin like a dog.

But the moment passes. When she lets go of her she feels a chill from the night air. Did he forget to close the window? Vesper hears as he unzips his pants, then feels his hands on her hips and pulling her closer. He isn’t graceful. Nothing about his movements is practised, or precise.

It doesn’t take long before he finishes inside of her. He roughly palms the space between her thighs and she makes a show of finishing. He flops onto the bed beside her, and she’s relieved he didn’t land on her this time.

She watches the ceiling. Moonlight peaks in over the curtains and stretches across to the wall opposite the window. The ridges on the ceiling cast shadows and look like waves.

The room is small, slightly more so than any of the guest rooms. The only furniture besides the double bed is a desk; he keeps his clothes in a wardrobe in another room. Vesper closes her eyes. She feels the body heat of the man beside her.

It isn’t hard to find reasons to love him. In the day he’s kind to her. He cares for his parents, and has stayed with them to help run the hotel long after his sisters left. Sometimes, when he isn’t working, he brings Vesper out for lunch and dinner. He pours cocktails for her in the kitchen. He walks with her by the beach. He waived her hotel fees rather just giving her the discount his parents offered. When he wakes up in the mornings he doesn’t move, and simply watches her; she suspects that if she weren’t there he still wouldn’t move, and would instead watch the window.

He’ll be awake again in a moment. Depending on how he feels, he’ll either ask her to stay or tell her to go back to her room, in case his parents should catch her with him. She wonders if it’s paranoia or guilt.

She doesn’t look at him.

She thinks of James, and what it was like to sleep next to him; she wishes she didn’t.

She thinks of the girl, and imagines falling asleep beside her.

*

“Would you ever think about growing your hair out?” Andreas asks her over breakfast.

Vesper runs a hand through her hair. It touches her chin now. She still isn’t used to how the breeze feels on the back of her neck. In the shower when she runs a soapy hand through her hair she is always surprised when it stops after a few inches.

“I don’t think long hair would suit me,” she tells him.

“That’s too bad,” he says. “I like girls with long hair.”

He’s nineteen, a thin, tall young man with dark hair and his mother’s baby face. Vesper rarely sees his mother; she’s always tucked away in the office. When she comes out she looks distracted, or like she isn’t all there. She’s never said a kind word to Vesper, but Vesper’s never heard her say a kind word to anyone, least of all Andreas. He loves her, though; every time she calls him useless he laughs, but it doesn’t put Vesper’s mind at ease.

Andreas took his father’s eyes: blue, but not as blue as James’.

She wonders how he is. She wants to say that whatever became of him, it’ll be unlikely that she’ll ever hear from him again. He’s a secret agent. Staying quiet is in the name. But then she remembers that he was the man who shot up an embassy and brought down that building in Venice. And then in Montenegro, he was anything but discrete.

It surprises her more that she’s heard so little about herself.

For the first week or so after her disappearance her name was everywhere, but fell off the radar following some celebrity scandal or another. She wasn’t going to tempt fate, though; she at least has the decency to be ashamed for what she’s done, and to hide.

“What do you think if I bring you out tonight?” he asks her.

Vesper smiles. “That would be nice.”

“Good,” he says. “My friend has a boat. We’ll take it. It will be late when we come back,” and he’s off, talking about where he’ll bring her and what they’ll see; who else will be there and where they’ll go. When he finishes, he says, “You meet me at the beach tonight. Don’t tell my parents where, if they ask.”

“I wouldn’t,” Vesper says.

Someone is walking through the front doors of the hotel. Check-in isn’t until one in the afternoon.

Andreas frowns, touches Vesper’s hand, and murmurs his excuse me before going to deal with it.

*

She wonders if he only likes her because she’s older, if only by a decade, but she can hardly judge. How many men has she loved for one stupid reason or another? Because he brought her somewhere exotic on holiday; because he brought her home to his family. Because he was French; because he was learning French, and looked at her cutely when he forgot a word. Because she thought he was lonely; because when he woke up after being tortured, he asked for her.

She especially can’t judge because she actually cares if Andreas loves her or not, and she can’t think of anything sadder than that.

*

On the boat she sits with her legs drawn beneath her. The sunset reflects in the water, turning it red. They’re far enough from shore that the island sits on the horizon like a strip of cloth, hovering on the water.

Someone kills the motor.

Andreas takes a seat next to her. “Are you having fun?”

He holds out a beer for her. It worries her that she sees the boat driver drinking. He’s older than she is, which is a relief and a worry; what kind of thirty-something man hangs out with teenagers? But then, this is Andreas, and he’s kind and friendly toward. And the town isn’t a big town. Everyone except her has lived here for a while.

She takes the beer.

“I’m having a wonderful time.” Does that make her sound old? That she’s having a _wonderful_ time?

Andreas says, “Come stand with me. Look at the view.”

“I just remembered that I don’t have good sea legs.”

“Not a problem,” Andreas tells her, taking her by the wrist and pulling her up to her feet.

He holds her body against his. Vesper can feel his breathing, and his warmth. His arm is heavy across her back; she doesn’t think she can escape from it.

“How’s that?” he asks.

“I feel ill.”

“Look at the horizon.” And he pulls her across the boat so she’s looking out away from the island. There is nothing but water, and clouds, and a darkening sky. The horizon stretches forever. Against her will Vesper feels herself relax.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asks the top of her head.

He’s young, and silly. Vesper doesn’t know why he wants her with him: if it’s love or a sense of adventure, or simply attraction. She expected his initial attraction to fade, or for him not to have the balls to make a move. After he did – after they fucked – she expected him to grow bored and for her to be forced to move along, because it wasn’t appropriate. She expected to be discovered through his own carelessness once keeping their secret lost its appeal for him. But it didn’t.

For all Vesper knows she’s the first woman he’s ever cared about like this. The thought warms her just as it fills her with dread: one doesn’t forgive their first. Vesper remembers all her firsts: her first kiss; her first love; the first time someone slipped a hand up her skirt and inside of her. By the time someone finally fucked her it felt inevitable, and long-overdue.

She wonders if it’s the same with him.

“It is beautiful,” she agrees.

He doesn’t kiss her in front of his friends but holds onto her. She expects she’ll be brought back to the hotel later that night and undressed on the way to his room, and fucked against the back of the door as soon as he closes it.

 *

The boat returns around midnight, and they finally part ways with all Andreas’ lovely friends around one. They stumble back to the hotel, tipsy and unbalanced. Vesper would have had more to eat had she known they would be drinking so much.

No matter how quiet they try to be, every noise is its own small apocalypse. The front door creaks open. Then it slams shut. The floorboards squeak as they pass from the foyer to the dining room. Andreas whispers against her face, his breath too warm, “Do you want some cocktails?” and Vesper shakes her head no.

They slip through to the corridor behind the dining room, quietly. The owners and a few staff members sleep there. Andreas’ room is the closest bedroom.

His arm hangs heavy on hers; she can’t help but lean against him. She should have drunk more in university, or gone out more with her work colleagues. She’d have a higher alcohol tolerance.

A light comes on from the foyer. Andreas grabs Vesper by the arm and throws her into the nearest room. Vesper stumbles forward for a few steps, then falls. The floor bruises her hips. She hears a clunk against the door, and freezes. Her heart beats rapidly. Her breathes become shallow. She doesn’t know what room this is or where she is – only that she was thrown in here, and that there’s a man standing outside the door stopping her from leaving.

And then the voices in the hallway. They aren’t shouting, but they may as well be. Vesper covers her ears. She braces herself and waits, wishing she was sober, or nor here, or in bed.

She wants James, or Yusef.

She wants to be that girl: to unroll the streets as she walks, watching the world from behind her sunglasses.

She wants to be alone.

*

The voices stop. Vesper hears footsteps recede. Light is peaking in under the hallway.

The door opens. Light pours in around. Vesper looks over her shoulder, to where Andreas is standing.

“Shit,” he says, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

He reaches out a hand to help her to her feet, but she pushes herself up. She’s shaking, and suddenly finds herself afraid that she’s going to cry.

“What happened?” she asks.

“It was my dad,” he says. “He heard us coming back. You should go back to your room, though. I’m sorry.”

He looks sincere. She thinks she might love him for it, and almost invites him back to her room with her.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, looking away from him and up to the chandelier. “What is this room?”

“It’s just a private conference room,” he says. “Mostly people hold parties here.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

*

A few days later, Christine asks, “Is anyone filming something nearby?”

Vesper tells her she doesn’t know. “Why?”

“There was this girl here last night,” she says. “Beautiful thing. She wore sunglasses, like the celebrities do, and had bodyguards.”

Christine is sitting across the table from Vesper. A pad sits open in front of her where she started to write a list of all the work the restaurant needed, but grew distracted.

“Was she alone?” Vesper asks. “Besides her bodyguards.”

“Yes,” she says, “which was strange. She’s younger than you, I think. Very pretty.”

“Asian?”

“Chinese, I think. But I don’t know. She didn’t speak a word of Greek, but she spoke French.”

Vesper remembers how she walked down the street, and didn’t even look at her. It’s been a few days since she first saw the girl; she didn’t think the girl would stay for too long. As pretty as the island is, it’s too small for someone carrying an aura like that.

“Did she say how long she was staying?”

“No,” Christine says. “She said very little, actually. But she asked for directions to the same hotel where you’re staying.”

*

They fuck again. When they finish, Andreas falls asleep with an arm wrapped around her waist. The blanket covers up to their waists, but when Vesper reaches for it Andreas holds her in place. In the evening chill her sweat dries on her skin and she feels too exposed; she settles for wrapping an arm around herself, although God knows that if someone finds them like this nothing she does will save the situation.

She isn’t the type who can get away with things. She wishes she was; everything she’s ever done has come with a list of consequences that stretch on for as long as the rest of her life. And here, after everything – she’s lucky. She shouldn’t be here. It’s a miracle she made it out of Venice, a miracle she hasn’t been caught, or recognised. Every moment she should be counting her blessings, because one day her luck will expire.

The thought finishes filtering through her head at the same time as she hears a gun shot.


End file.
